


Aweary of the Sun

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Community: watsons_woes, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, POV John Watson, Post-Reichenbach, References to Shakespeare, Squinty Gen, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:57:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fragment of one of Shakespeare's plays torments John after Sherlock's death.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Please read the tags first, and do not read this story if it might harm you.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Aweary of the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> For watsons_woes July Writing Prompt Challenge #22 _"The Bard"_ \- Use Shakespeare.
> 
>  
> 
> _Originally posted on Livejournal on July 23, 2013_

_Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow_

John had learned it at school, this bit of Shakespeare. Macbeth. It chased around in his head over and over as he went from one numb necessity to another, before he wound down into the quiet-wrong-empty flat.

_creeps in this petty pace from day to day,  
to the last syllable of recorded time;_

The days went so slowly, after, that they might as well have stopped. Everything might as well have stopped. But on it all went, all the clock-ticking, wall-staring hours where Sherlock wasn't.

_and all our yesterdays have lighted fools  
the way to dusty death._

John had thought about following.

He was still thinking.

_Out out brief candle  
Life is but a walking shadow,_

Shadows and dust. "We mortals are but shadows and dust." Wasn't Shakespeare, was some movie with Russell Crowe, but it didn't make it less applicable.

Sherlock would have hated the movie probably, if they'd ever watched it together. Too many anachronisms. Assuming he hadn't deleted the Roman Empire, which he probably had.

Sherlock had deleted everything now though, hadn't he.

_a poor player  
who struts and frets his hour upon the stage_

Strutting, that was Sherlock. Anywhere he went, where he knew his intellect would prove right. Every crime scene was his stage, and he trod those blood-stained boards more fiercely than any wannabe-Olivier.

But it wasn't an act. It wasn't some- some horribly Machiavellian series of self-initiated crimes engineered just so he could impress the Yard and the public. Sherlock might not have the best grip on social propriety, but he wouldn't arrange a theft or a murder just to show off. Never.

_and then..._

_and then..._

_and then is heard no more._

No more. No more violin, no more exploding eyeballs, no more shouts or texts for John to bring him a pen or his mobile or three pounds of sheep's brains at two in the bloody morning. No more.

John _hated_ Shakespeare now. He hated his English teacher at school for making him learn this one bit by heart. He hated the loop his mind had got stuck in, skipping the groove, chasing this fragment of Shakespearean tat that half the kids in his Year had memorised round and round his head in a hypothermic mental whirlpool; sinking lower and feeling colder on each iteration.

The other half of the students in John's Year had memorised Marc Antony's speech to the Romans from Julius Caesar. John doubted that would have been much better.

 _It is a tale told by an_ idiot. _  
Full of sound and fury, signifying_ nothing.

And it was. Sherlock had to have lost his bloody mind if he thought for one second that John would believe that tripe about Sherlock being a fraud, making everything up. What kind of idiot was Sherlock, to think that anything anyone said, even saying it himself, would convince John that Sherlock had been a fake?

...But then why had he jumped? There was no reason. John knew that he shouldn't blame himself, but who else was there? Who else was close enough friends with Sherlock to see something like this brewing inside him?

"Just one," Sherlock had said once. "Just one."

 _Why?_ John had looked, he'd observed, he searched the flat in fits of helpless anguish, trying to find anything that might tell him why Sherlock had done this. What had made him take this action, was it Moriarty? Was it the pressure of the lie that had been built against him?

Sherlock didn't- wouldn't.

But he had.

It was beyond understanding. It didn't seem real. But it was.

Sherlock was gone, and he'd left John the puzzle of his unsolvable death, and indifferent time ticking on and on.

_Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..._

-.-.-  
(that's it)


End file.
